PONE-D-21-17666

Vaccination against misinformation: The inoculation technique reduces the continued influence effect

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Polczyk,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

ACADEMIC EDITOR:

As you can see below, both expert reviewers found your study interesting and offer extensive and extremely valuable comments to improve your manuscript. However, while both have identified some merits, there are also conceptual and methodological issues that should be fully addressed. Overall, from my own assessment, I agree with most of the presented comments. I am not going to reiterate them all. Still, but I would suggest particular attention to the following:

Moderate your claims and do not overstate your findings

Stick to the terms/concepts (sometimes redundancy is a good thing)

Provide details on the Power calculation, namely the effect size specification

Please consider the additional references suggested by the reviewers

All the remaining comments of the reviewers should be comprehensively addressed.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 07 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

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Margarida Vaz Garrido

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Review of PONE-D-21-17666

1. Abstract: Rephrase “new highly applicable technique has been discovered” – You hardly discovered this technique.

2. p.3: Any reference to Nyhan & Reifler’s 2010 study must be accompanied by a reference to a failure to replicate their work, e.g. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-018-9443-y.

3. p.3 reference to the integration accounts of the CIE should refer to Kendeou’s KReC model, e.g. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-41945-016 and https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-018-0848-y.

4. p.4 “it is assumed that the model updating leads to local consistency and to errors in drawing conclusions when the situation is assessed globally” requires more explanation.

5. p.4: The selective retrieval account does not *necessarily* require the assumption of dual processes.

6. p.4: “CIE occurs when both misinformation and its correction are activated” – a CIE could also occur when the correction is not activated at all.

7. p.4/5: “controlled processes based on cognitive resources” is an odd phrase. Of course cognitive processes are based on cognitive resources.

8. p.5: illusory truth means familiar (e.g. repeated) information is more likely perceived as true, not “information known beforehand”

9. p.5: When discussing the potential role of worldview effects, the discussion needs to be more balanced, as there is also evidence that worldview does not matter much. For a recent discussion, see https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0145

10. p.5/6: When discussing factors that are useful to reduce misinformation reliance, consider consulting https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210746.

11. p.6 It is incorrect to state that “no novel techniques limiting the impact of misinformation in the CIE paradigm were identified”, not only in light of my previous comment, but also in light of existing research on inoculation in this domain. Do not overstate the novelty of your work please.

12. p.8: it should be mentioned that in Cook et al.’s study, the inoculation led to generalization from tobacco to climate change.

13. p.9: when claiming that no research has tested inoculation against neutral/fictional misinformation, it may be worth discussing 10.31234/osf.io/48zqn, which used fictional misinformation (albeit about a real-world topic). This is also relevant as it failed to replicate Rich & Zaragoza’s implied vs. explicit misinformation difference referred to on p.12.

14. p.11: I cannot replicate the power analysis. To detect a 5*2 within-between interaction effect of f = 0.1 with alpha = 0.05 and beta = 0.15 requires a sample of N = 340, according to my G*Power analysis. Note that even greater power is needed to test some of the specific hypotheses, so technically I would argue the study is underpowered, especially given how much emphasis is placed in the discussion on some of the simple contrasts between two specific cells (and given no correction for multiple comparisons is applied). If an (online) replication is possible, I would strongly suggest that, even if it were just one that focuses on key conditions. If not, achieved power should be discussed as a limitation.

15. p.13 I was initially confused about the “six rating scales” – there seem to be two scales per scenario (one targeting the misinformation, one the retraction), so with six scenarios, I thought there should be 12 scales, but there are only 3 retraction scenarios, so it’s 2*3. Please add some additional clarification.

16. p.15 (but also throughout): All examples should make sense to a reader not familiar with the materials. This could be achieved by sticking to one scenario across examples. For example, it is unclear what role “Harter's son” plays in the theft scenario.

17. p.15 an ANOVA with two factors is not a one-way ANOVA.

18. p.15: There is no “main effect of the interaction” – it’s an interaction effect. On p.17, is “main interaction effect” meant to mean “three-way interaction effect”?

19. Figures: Apart from the obvious issue with the y-axis labels, I think the no-correction control condition should be presented all the way on the left; also the error bars need to be specified.

20. p.17 please rephrase, avoiding the exaggerated language (“proved”, “extremely”): “inoculation has proved to be extremely effective in reducing CIE, but only for highly credible sources of retraction”. Again, a replication would be required to make any strong claims. Also, “prove” on p.21 is too strong.

21. p.19: The finding that “belief in misinformation, but not in retraction, predicted the reliance on misinformation” meshes well with the ERP results here: https://doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2020.1849226

22. p.21 : I did not understand how “Skepticism could be the result of maintaining the coherence of the model, which prevents the creation of a gap while blocking the impact of retractions.”. Please unpack this for the reader.

23. p.22 I agree with the conclusion that it seems that an inoculation “put participants into a state of

heightened general skepticism” – consider cross-referencing this with other literature on response criterion effects. Did inoculated participants generally write fewer words?

24. p.23 I did not understand why it could be considered “right to rely on critical information” in the expert-correction condition?

25. p.23 I did not follow the discussion on generated information, because participants in this study did not generate the information. I did not understand why information generation was (related to?) “the reason why participants rejected the critical information which "came to their minds" more easily than one that was just a part of a story, which just was not interpreted as a "candidate for being false"”. Please unpack and rephrase.

26. p.24 The notion that repeating misinformation in the context of a correction may lead to increased misinformation reliance is contradicted by a number of studies (e.g., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.01.014, https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-020-00241-6).

27. p.25 It is unclear what “inoculation does not immunize to the scenario schema” means.

28. It may be good to add a note to either introduction or discussion that the two theoretical CIE accounts are not mutually exclusive and may be complementary.

29. The discussion is much too long, and could be easily cut in half. It contains too much redundant summary, and tends to place too much weight on specific condition differences that the study was not powered to assess properly.

30. While the English is largely acceptable, there were a few sentences that were confusing.

a. Abstract: This sentence is confusing: “The results showed that the reliability of the sources of corrections did not affect their processing when participants were not inoculated, but, at the same time, a significant reduction in the reliance on misinformation among vaccinated participants when the correction was made from a highly credible source was observed.” Break down into 2 sentences, starting the second with “When participants were inoculated…”

b. Abstract: What does “within the remembering framework” mean? Rephrase.

c. p.4: “where the whole model is reconstructed and new is created” should read “where the whole model is reconstructed and a new one created” or “where the whole model is reconstructed and created anew”

d. p.5: “information being coded is always treated as it was true and may be falsified later by attaching a negation tag to itself” should read “information being encoded is always treated initially as if it were true and is only falsified subsequently by attaching a negation tag” (information cannot attach anything to itself)

e. p.5: “non-memory factors, e.g. motivational (e.g. attitudes and the worldview)” should read “non-memory factors such as motivational factors (e.g., a person’s attitudes and worldview)”

f. p.7: “attitudes that are not vaccinated” – attitudes cannot be vaccinated

g. p.10: This is confusing—consider rephrasing and splitting into two sentences: “Given that retractions are more effective if their source is trusted but not necessarily expert, not only replication of existing reports can be expected (Hypothesis 1), but also different vaccination effects depending on the reliability of the sources of the retractions.”

h. p.14: This needs revision: “For ratings 0 or 1, message informing of surviving the misinformation attack was presented; for ratings 2-4 it informed about the occurrence of resistance, but the impact of misinformation on the participant’s decision was accented”

i. p.19: I think “The effect of inoculation on belief in misinformation and retraction, as hypothesized, was observed for the credible source condition, whereas inoculation significantly increased belief in retraction and lowered belief in misinformation” needs to read “The effect of inoculation on belief in misinformation and retraction, as hypothesized, was observed for the credible source condition, *where* inoculation significantly increased belief in retraction and lowered belief in misinformation”

31. The discussion section was particularly difficult to follow. Consider the following section as an example: “On the other hand, the results for credible source condition, in which there were no differences in the estimates of belief and in which neither of these variables was an inferential reasoning score predictor, may indicate that the respondents paid some attention to the reliability of the sources. Therefore, skepticism towards corrections may play a greater role considering that even with lower estimates of belief in misinformation compared to the other two retraction conditions, the results of inference in the credible source condition did not differ from them. As a result, one may express the same estimates of belief, but skepticism requires them to be careful about the submitted memory reports and provide the answer that best explains the described events. The skepticism itself may result from the

fact that a situation where the critical information perfectly explaining the described events may be considered, for some reason, erroneous, is thought to be suspicious by participants.” – I don’t really understand any of the four sentences in that section. Simplify the sentence structures. Shorten the sentences where possible. Avoid referring to “these variables” or “them”, instead always specify what you mean. Choose one set of terms and then stick to those terms; e.g. stick to the term “inference score” consistently, without paraphrasing (inferential reasoning score); what are “results of inference”? Also shorten the paragraphs, as there are multiple paragraphs that span more than a page. Another example is on p.24: What does “its” refer to in “Retraction may therefore be less credible as it would lead to its creation”? I stress these are merely examples; the entire discussion requires the authors’ careful attention.

32. There are many typos and minor language issues throughout, but these can probably be dealt with by the editorial office. Just pointing out a typo that might escape them on p.15: Huyhn

Reviewer #2: Study tests the impact of inoculation on reducing the continued influence effect (CIE) – finding that when participants are inoculated before showing misinformation and a retraction, it reduces reliance on misinformation to the same level as a control group that weren’t exposed to the misinformation (e.g., inoculation combined with a retraction potentially eliminates the CIE). This is an interesting and insightful result, in a well-designed experiment, and worthy of publication. The connection of inoculation theory with CIE is novel.

I have no problems with the experiment or results. Generally, there is one omission in the discussion/conclusion that I would like to see addressed. The inoculation seems to warn against the general possibility of being misinformed, which is not an optimal way to inoculate people against misinformation as it can breed general cynicism resulting in not only decreased vulnerability to misinformation but also decreased belief in accurate news. There is a body of literature exploring the breeding of cynicism when interventions against misinformation potentially decrease trust in accurate news sources that is relevant to this discussion (Ashley, Poepsel, & Willis, 2010; Mihailidis, 2009; Pennycook & Rand,2017; Tully & Vraga, 2017; Van Duyn & Collier, 2017).

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Reviewer #2: No

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PONE-D-21-17666R1Vaccination against misinformation: The inoculation technique reduces the continued influence effectPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Polczyk

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

I commend your efforts in revising the manuscript, which is now greatly improved. Below you can find the reviewers’ comments. As you can see, these are mostly minor points that you should be easily able to address. However, I emphasize the importance of addressing all the comments provided, particularly the power issues (following the recommendations of Rev 1) and the discussion of source characteristics and clarification of the hypotheses (suggested by Rev 2).

Please consider the additional references suggested by the reviewers

Please proofread the paper (Rev 1 offers several suggestions in this regard)

Please submit your revised manuscript by March 15. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Margarida Vaz Garrido

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Partly

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Review of PONE-D-21-17666-R1

The authors should be commended for a thorough revision. I only have a few remaining points, all minor.

1. I believe the power analysis was conducted incorrectly. Effect sizes provided by commercial statistics programs already account for correlation among repeated measures. To avoid this, the option “as in SPSS” should be selected. This returns N = 340. If the authors believe this is incorrect, they need to at least report and justify their chosen value for the correlation. Note that even greater power is needed to test some of the specific hypotheses, so technically I would argue the study is underpowered, especially given how much emphasis is placed in the discussion on some of the simple contrasts between two specific cells (and given no correction for multiple comparisons is applied). If an (online) replication is possible, I would strongly suggest that, even if it were just one that focuses on key conditions. If not, achieved power should be discussed as a limitation.

2. Abstract: Unclear what “behavioral memory statements” are—perhaps use “behavioral manifestations of memory” as in the GD?

3. P.13: fix odd format of “Guillory & Geraci”

4. P.21 “most likely be an effect” should be “most likely an effect”

5. P.23 “as was in … condition” should be “as was the case in the … condition”

6. P.23 It should be “only when one generates … but not when one is”; on p.26 it should also be “one may .. with one’s worldview”; p.27 “If one experiences … one may want to … keep one’s assumptions”; p.28 “one can…one declares that one does not believe”

7. P.25 “not exclusively for the previous explanation” should be “not mutually exclusive with the previous explanation”

8. P.26: “a crucial role may play a number of factors” should be “a number of factors may play a crucial role”

9. P.27 “yet take advantage of misinformation” should be “yet rely [or: make use] of misinformation”; “failure to the retraction retrieval” should be “failure of retraction retrieval”

10. P.27 “by, for example, by”

11. P.27: Re “there must be some explanation for certain events", the authors may find this interesting: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-682X.2009.00280.x

12. P.28 “exposed to some problem-solving process” should be “involved in some problem-solving process”

13. P.30 “under retractions’ highly credible source condition” – please rephrase (e.g., “under conditions where a retraction came from a highly credible source”)

14. P.30 either say “demonstrate consistent inoculation efficacy” or “demonstrate a consistent inoculation effect”

15. P.31 “exploring the inoculation” should be “exploring inoculation”

16. P.31 “impact of inoculation on misinformation” should be “impact of inoculation on misinformation reliance”

Reviewer #3: This manuscript presents one study testing the effects of the inoculation technique on the continued influence effect (CIE), while also addressing the role that source characteristics like credibility, trustworthiness, and expertise play on the effectiveness of inoculation (and of retractions of misinformation, in general). The topic of the manuscript is a timely and relevant one. When reading the manuscript, I liked that the authors addressed the issue of misinformation correction by bringing together solid theoretical frameworks – those involved in the CIE and the inoculation theory. I also liked the Discussion section; I specifically liked that the authors tried to integrate the different theories in light of their results and put forward an alternative conceptual proposal for the CIE.

In general, I feel positive towards the publication of this work. But I have some comments that I’d like the authors to address before the manuscript is accepted for publication. Most of these comments have to do with the source characteristics that were manipulated, and one final comment refers to integration of the inoculation technique with relevant research regarding the detection of fake news and misinformation. I list my comments below:

1) Given that the manipulation of source characteristics is central to the study, I was surprised that those characteristics were not even briefly discussed in the introduction section. As such, the reader is left wondering why different effects of trustworthiness and expertise should be expected, or why a credible source should be more efficient in what comes to reducing/eliminating the effects of misinformation. The characteristics of the source should also be discussed in terms of their relation to the mechanisms underlying the CIE, and the inoculation technique, in processual terms - how do they interfere with the processing of information and how can this be integrated with the mechanisms underlying the CIE and inoculation?

2) Related to point 1, the hypotheses are confusing, and some seem to mix simple main effects with qualification/interaction effects. For example, in H1, the authors say “Half of the participants had previously undergone the inoculation procedure. Given that retractions are more effective if their source is trusted but not necessarily expert (16,19,50), replication of existing reports can be expected (Hypothesis 1).” So, first it seems they will refer to the inoculation effect, which they don’t. Then, they talk about trustworthiness vs. expertise effects. And finally, they say “replication of existing reports can be expected (Hypothesis 1).” What does this mean? Which reports? Do the authors mean previous studies, such as Ecker and Antonio’s study? H2 is also confusing and unclear. The authors say “We also expected different vaccination effects depending on the reliability of the sources of the retractions. The inoculated individual could rely less on misinformation if the source of the correction was credible in both dimensions: trustworthiness and expertise (85), but not if it was solely expert or trustworthy (Hypothesis 2)”. Why is that so? Why should we expect these qualifications of the retraction effects (the authors never explain why they expect that corrections from sources will be accepted more if the source is both trustworthy and expert, rather than just having one characteristic? Why is that?), and why only for the inoculated participants? I can’t find the rational for the hypotheses in the information about source characteristics that is provided in the introduction (which is very little). The rational for H3 and H4 also needs to be better explained. I believe all the hypotheses would be clearer if the introduction gave the reader more information on source characteristics effects and their relation to correction of misinformation, the CIE, and inoculation.

3) I found the Methods section a little confusing, especially in what concerns the description of the materials and the procedure of the retraction scenarios. Regarding the operationalization of the different types of sources, it is difficult to understand exactly what it meant by expert, trustworthy, or credible sources. I know the materials are available in an appendix, but it would make the comprehension of the manipulations easier if one example could be given in the materials and procedure section.

4) Related to this, when examining the different scenarios, I felt that expert sources were somewhat different between the scenarios. As an example, in scenario 1, the expert source is “technicians employed at the municipal wastewater treatment plant”; in scenario 2, the expert source is “Evan's friend”. It seems to me that expert sources in scenario 1 align a lot more with the definition provided by the authors (“a source with access to information [not as a result of professionalism, but simply because of the possibility to access true information]”) than the expert source in scenario 2. Also, in scenario 5, why is a local newspaper trustworthy and not expert? Were the scenarios and the sources taken from previous research? To what extent can we be sure that sources were indeed interpreted as credible, expert, and trustworthy? And to what extent can we be sure that there were no differences in these interpretations between scenarios? Unless the manipulations were taken from previous research (it’s not clear, and if so, it should be clearly stated which scenario and which source operationalization came from which previous study) that had measures to make sure the sources are indeed interpreted as having the characteristics they’re intended to have, the possibility of differences between the scenarios should at least be discussed.

One note regarding the materials appendix, scenario 4 seem to be incomplete (the first message introducing the story is missing?)

5) Given the extension of the analyses and results presented, it would be easier to follow if the authors referred to the specific hypotheses stated in the introduction that each analysis and effects relate to.

6) Regarding the practical implications, I was not entirely convinced how one can implement the inoculation technique in day-to-day situations and in the general situations where misinformation is encountered. What comes to my mind is to have the kind of exercise the authors used to inoculate participants in media and information websites, as a way to make people aware of the prevalence of misinformation which in turn may make them more careful and detailed in their analysis and processing of the information they get. And this made me think of the work by Gordon Pennycook and his collaborators showing that propensity for analytical thinking is positively correlated with the ability to discern fake news from real news (e.g., Pennycook & Rand, 2019). I believe the manuscript would gain if the authors discussed the effects of inoculation also in light of this line of research trying to find ways to combat misinformation.

7) The full text should be proof read by a native English speaker, as there are some typos and some strange sentence formulations. This may be one of the reasons why some sections were confusing (e.g., the hypotheses, the methods).

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Vaccination against misinformation: The inoculation technique reduces the continued influence effect

PONE-D-21-17666R2

Dear Dr. Polczyk

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Kind regards,

Margarida Vaz Garrido

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The authors did a great job in addressing most of the final comments. I think this paper is now greatly improved and ready for publication. I wish the authors much success in their future research endeavors.

Reviewers' comments: